My thoughts for what they are worth.
The problem with prequels is that no matter what you do or say, you always have to remember what comes afterwards, be it ten years or a hundred years, unless you are going to do what the rebooted movies have done. So the main character focus will not be the captain, why ? Every major decision affecting the ship and crew will have to be made by the captain, so no matter how well written, the lead character will still be subordinate to the captain who will always have the final say.
That ship ! What can I say other than what a dreadful design.
The writers are deliberately writing a gay character, so what, no reason to keep reminding the viewers that they are gay, just get on with it as any other character does.
That's about it, will give it a try when it comes out.

I've never minded prequels. It didn't spoil Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom knowing that he survives at the end because we'd already seen Raiders of the Lost Ark (Temple of Doom had other issues that made it the weakest of the original three movies).

In this case, story wise, there will still be credible threat to the new characters because we don't know how things will turn out for them. We know some of the broad picture of the Federation's future and its past history through the stories we have of other characters, but nothing yet about these new characters.

Besides, drama isn't just about not knowing whether characters survive or not.

The trickiest part will be getting the continuity right with what do know.

Sure, we can have small threats, localised to this crew but we won't have anything as important as Wolf 359, or the Dominion War, or Praxis because such events have never been mentioned in "future" Trek. They can introduce new races but nothing like the Klingons or Romulans because, again, they aren't in the future timeline. That's the problem with prequels, they can be interesting but ultimately they can't have a major impact on the universe they inhabit.

Yet it's not the events themselves that made the stories great. It's the impact the events had on the characters we were invested in. Such as, Praxis: Kirk feeling almost betrayed by Spock, Kirk facing and overcoming his prejudice, Spock himself being betrayed. Wolf 359: Riker's inner struggle, the loss of Picard. The Dominion War: how it affected the crew in so many ways. The events don't need to be Galaxy shaping, but whatever the events are, we need to care about the characters and how they relate to each other. Otherwise it's just a bunch of FX and people runnng around shouting.

Just because something has not been mentioned in future Star Trek it doesn't necessarily mean something big, Federation threatening, can't happen.

Do we mention every key turning point that happened in past wars in everyday conversation? Do we mention major political changes and upheavals or natural disasters in everyday conversation?

No. The same logic applies here too.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Besides which this new crew could be involved in some covert activity that saved the Federation. Something that still wasn't public in the later eras that we've seen. The code breaking activities of Bletchley Park in the Second World War, for example, were not made public for many years.

Section 31 might be involved.

As regards major Federation historical events, we have some of them signposted, a few with a fair amount of detail, but there's still plenty of room for more major events and extra detail about the ones we do know something about.

DS9 managed to give a new viewpoint on the Battle of Wolf 359. We knew the outcome, but Sisko was the focus of DS9's story, not the battle. The battle was merely the backdrop for DS9's story.

A prequel could be good, or it could be bad.

A sequel could be good, or it could be bad.

The setting is not an absolute in terms of whether or not the show will be good or not. That will be down to the writing, and the acting. With Fuller on board, I don't think we'll need to be overly worried about that side of things.

Besides, with the series already being profitable, further spin offs are inevitable IMO - perhaps one of those will go back to the future

Why are the new movies set in an alternate timeline? Because it gives the writers freedom to create dramatic tension. The idea of the future being unknown creates tension. They aren't bound by existing events and they can do anything they like (often badly but I digress ). Yes you can argue that new characters means that we don't know their fates and that's fair but you are still constraining what they can do and what they influence. And what do we gain by setting it pre-TOS against a post-Nemesis setting? Maybe the odd reference to some TOS event probably but is that better than pushing the Trek story past it's 2002 endpoint? I'd say no.

I've no issue if you guys disagree, whatever you enjoy is entirely up to you but for me, I'm tired of history revisions and rewrites - I want Star Trek to boldly go once more.

To me the new films are simply enjoyable hokum. Poor scripts, some terrible acting, but what saved them was the humour.

But any new Trek TV series should have been in the original universe. I obviously will give it a go when its on, but everything atm is screaming "dud" in more than one angle....

An unknown future doesn't create tension. Tension, and drama, are created by making us care about how deeply affected characters are by the world around them.

I think some Star Trek fans are caring far more about continuity and skirting round scenes written into some obscure episode 20 years or more ago than will the makers of this show.

If they want to write in some epic event they will do that if the show requires it as opposed to not do so for fear some fan claims it would have changed the Federation so Piccard would have mentioned it in an episode set 90 years later if it had occurred.

They will change many things to update the show so that it does not look like a 1960s TV show. In fact it will probably look more futuristic than Next Generation did as that was relying on 1980s technology and we have a lot of that already in real life hundreds of years early.

If those big things are not going to stop creativity and credibility of visual design because they would not be 100% 'right' then I am pretty sure they will not miss doing something out of fear fans will argue it cannot have happened or we would know about it.

This is science fiction. Rule number 1 is there will always be a way around anything so do it if the plot calls for it and worry about explanations later.

Doctor Who has reinvented its mythology more than once. It adds things to please fans but will not let decades old mythology stop what they want to do in the here and now.

And I fully expect this show to do exactly the same.

Just wondering if you thought Titanic was a boring film? I mean, we all knew it was going to sink. Right? What we cared about in that film, if you liked it at all, was Jack and Rose. The dramatic tension was there and amplified because we knew the ship was going to sink, but we didn't know whether Jack and Rose would survive.

Plenty of drama in war movies where we knew ahead of time which side won.

The future doesn't need to be completely unknown for there to be dramatic tension.

Finally, do you really think that if there was a Star Trek set after Nemesis, the Federation would be allowed to be destroyed? Since the Federation stands as a metaphor, not just for the USA, but also for a hopeful, positive future for humanity and sentient-kind, that will never happen. Having a threat to the Federation is as much a false jeopardy as the risk of killing off Kirk, Spock or McCoy was in the original series.

YMMV of course.

my opinions

TIMEFRAME: i'm disappointed It is pre-TOS. I wanted a post-voyager one but I would also have liked something In between TOS & TNG. Nevertheless its still perfectly viable that the show could still have great characters and storylines and hence be a hit.
LEAD CHARACTER: this is a real left field decision. I have strong suspicion that eventually this character may eventually become the main captain- they'll kill off the captain at some point and this female will assume command.
HOMOSEXUAL: firstly I didn't realise Fuller was gay. I agree with what someone said a few days ago. by all means have a gay character but don't ram it down our throats. it should be referenced in maybe 4 or 5 episodes and that's it. don't constantly bring it up.
SHIP: well this is good news. fuller has said the design will not be that ship in the clip. the top was decent but the underside of the ship looked fugly

Reference sexuality as often as needed. I don't think it's a case of "ram it down throats" but rather that we avoid a "token" gay character but have a characters some of which happen to be gay. We can't just apply some sort of quota to it.

I like fullers statement about not being too bothered about visual continuity.
its 2016 and I expect the show to make full use of modern effects and technology. personally I would hate it if they made the ship look less attractive/futuristic because they were worried that it might contradict the continuity of what later ships look like (i.e enterprise D, Voyager etc). and I don't mind if alien races look slightly different with more modern prosthetics- just as long as they are recognisable.

remember its a TV show at the end of the day and will inevitably use what effects/ set designs that modern technology allows. imagine if the TOS movies and TNG had of made the Klingons look like hey did in TOS- that would have been ridiculous (LOL).

random note: now we know the title shouldn't one of the moderators change the title of the thread to Star Trek Discovery. just a thought

I didn't much care for it But it's a bad example of your point, which I do understand by the way and don't entirely disagree with. The point of Titanic was that you did know how it ended and that in itself created the tension and was the point of the story. Star Trek is a different beast, it's about discovering the unknown and thats difficult to do as a prequel. You aren't wrong to say it's possible to create tension in a prequel but my point is "why bother"? Is there any compelling reason to explore that period of Trek history? Is it compelling enough to offset the negatives of a prequel setting?

And the audience, are they clamouring for a story set pre-TOS rather than post-Nemesis? It feels very much like George RR Martin writing his short stories in the Ice and Fire series, they are interesting enough but frankly most people would rather he got on with finishing Winds of Winter instead

It IS being set in the original (not the recent movie) universe. Fuller confirmed that.

It's Bryan Fuller, he has a track record here. Dead Like Me focused on a female main character of a group where she wasn't in charge. Fuller really likes his female protagonists dealing with authority figures so it's unsurprising he's gone in this direction.

Allow me to remind you of an exchange between Q and Picard, from All Good Things...

There's a reason the central character won't be a captain. It will be a journey of self-discovery , about learning and growing as a person, probably as she moves through the ranks over time (perhaps over several seasons). As we grow personally and professionally we see the world differently, people change and relationships change. That is what Star Trek has always been about; the exploration of (wait for it...) the human condition.

But Q said that to Picard. Q or others like him are yet to make that revelation to previous captains.

It was a revelation to Picard, and reminder to the audience about what Star Trek has always been about.

"To seek out new life and new civilizations"

The backdrop of the space exploration was just that, backdrop, it's always been about the exploration of the human conditiion. That's no secret, or even my personal opinion. Roddenberry said it often enough in interviews.

Yep. Good drama, whatever the genre, is about character and relationships. If you care enough about the characters and their fates, it doesn't matter what the backdrop is. Whether it's Westeros, Middle Earth, or set in a zombie apocalypse, or whether it's space exploration in the 23rd/24th Century, a time travelling police box or car, or something more mundane, it's all window dressing.

That said, I wouldn't swap any of my favourites in the science fiction or fantasy genres for "something more mundane".

It probably had as much to do with that as it did with that the TV and movie franchise rights are now split between Paramount and CBS.It was probably more down to merchandising then creative freedom.